Since the merchandise service life has decreased recently due to a variety of merchandise items, and the number of consumers with customization service orientation has increased along with the penetration of the Internet, the necessity of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and one-to-one marketing has received a great deal of attention. These methods are very effective for purposes of increasing the customer satisfaction and winning and networking new customers.
The one-to-one marketing is a kind of database marketing. Personal attribute information such as the age, sex, hobby, taste, and purchase log of each customer is stored as a database. The contents of the information are analyzed, and a proposal that meets customer's needs is presented. A typical method is variable print. Especially, along with the recent progress in DTP (DeskTop Publishing) technology and the spread of digital printers, variable print systems have been developed, which customize and output a document for each customer. Such a variable print system is required to create a customized document in which contents in quantity that changes for each customer are laid out in an optimum manner.
Generally, when such a customized document is to be created by a variable print system, containers are laid out on the document. A container indicates a partial area to draw a content (drawing content) and is sometimes called a field area. More specifically, containers are laid out on the document, and a database and the layout are associated with each other (each content in the database is associated with each container). With this operation, a customized document (document) is created. In this specification, such a document will be referred to as a variable data document.
In the variable print system, a content which is different for each customer can be inserted in each of the containers laid out. The size of data to be inserted in a content is flexible. If the size of a container is fixed, the following problem arises. For example, when text data having a size larger than the container size is inserted, the text cannot wholly be displayed in the container. Alternatively, when image data having a size larger than the container size is inserted, the image is partially missing. Such a problem is called overflow.
If the content is image data, the image may be reduced and drawn in the container. However, the image may be excessively small. There is also proposed a technique in which if text data whose size is larger than a fixed container size is inserted, the font size of the text is reduced to display the entire text in the container. However, if the font size is adjusted, it may be too small to balance the whole document, or the document may become difficult to read.
The “layout design apparatus” of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-129658 discloses an automatic layout technique to solve the above-described problems. In this technique, when the size of a container becomes large, the size of an adjacent container is reduced to maintain the interval between them.
According to the description of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-129658 described above, the container size increases in accordance with input of a text. However, when the size of a container becomes large, the size of an adjacent container is reduced to maintain the interval between them. For this reason, as the amount of the input text increases, the adjacent container is continuously reduced.
Additionally, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-129658, no variable print system for creating a document customized for each customer by inserting contents data while associating the above-described database with each container is taken into consideration.
As a layout method considering variable data print, a fixed container is created, and contents data is inserted in it. However, when a container with a fixed size is used, and contents data having a larger size than the container is inserted, overflow occurs. If the data is forcibly inserted by reducing the font size, the font size becomes too small. The container size may be increased or decreased in accordance with the size of contents data to be inserted. However, when a plurality of containers are associated, and the size of one container is increased, the associated containers must reduce their sizes as the size of that container increases. Hence, no layout processing considering the size balance between containers can be executed.
As a layout method considering the size balance between a plurality of containers associated with each other, when the size of each container is changed in accordance with the size of contents data inserted in it, layout processing may be executed by adjusting the change amount of each container size. The associated containers can be subjected to layout processing considering the size balance.
In this layout method, however, the container size is always changed in accordance with the size of inserted contents data. Even when a preset container size needs to be maintained for the sake of layout, the container size is changed regardless of user's desire.
For example, in inserting contents data having a size larger than the container size, the container size is preferably increased in accordance with the size of the contents data because overflow or font size must be taken into consideration. However, in inserting contents data with a size smaller than the container size, not all users want to reduce the container size in accordance with the contents data. For example, the user may want to maintain the preset container size.
As described above, even when some containers should be laid out by using a preset standard size, the container sizes are always changed in accordance with inserted contents data, and no layout desired by the user is obtained.